Here is our 2016 Hubbard Christmas Card Video! This Christmas we want to share with your our “funnest” thing we do at home!! …. which is Family Night aka Family Home Evening (FHE)! Enjoy our family in 60 seconds.
PS – See our last post for our digital Christmas Card!
Thanks to all you who have sent us Christmas Cards!!! We love them!! One day we’ll send out physical Christmas Cards again but for now… this digital Christmas Cards is all I can handle! We are making a Christmas Video this year but we can’t finish that until Dallin’s finals are over. 🙂 So keep checking back for that video!
Dallin – Finished his first year and started his 2nd year of medical school.
May Bo – Hmm… what have I been doing?! I clean everyday and do laundry then the kids mess it up before Dallin gets back from school. The laundry is seriously getting bigger and bigger with 3 kids!!!
Micah – Is still in preschool but is doing 1st grade math and reading on the side. He is also taking piano lesson and loves it very much! It’s a struggle to keep up with this kid.
Quentin – Loves to play with cars and Legos. Quentin is a computer genius. He knows how to do practically everything on the computer. Quentin is only 3 years old but he can play Minecraft on the computer all by himself. He can find things that we delete in the recycle bin and navigates the internet like a pro…… we definitely have to keep an eye on this kid!
Emily – Is cute and she walks now. We call her our “Boo Boo Bear!” She loves to eat chicken and yogurt. She can say “Mama” “Dada” “Uh-oh!” “All Done!”
As a family we started 2 different LLCs this year. Barolock was started by Dallin and his friends who made a new design for an orthopedic hip. May Bo Hubbard LLC is just for fun which consist of all the random blogs and photography stuff I do.
Dallin and I are also working on a research project on ECMO. Dallin is the PI and May Bo programmed a whole database for this project! We work under a physician and nurse. A team of medical students, undergrads and a high school student was miraculously formed to help us out with this project. We hope we can help newborn babies and children who are very sick. Dallin makes trips to the NICU to see these helpless babies and hope we can help improve ECMO. Right now 50% of patients die during or after being on ECMO. It has actually been a spiritual experience for both of us as we have seen God guide us to work on this project together. We have felt God’s love as we learn about the babies on ECMO. Both Dallin and I have shed a few tears as we’ve worked on this project and we pray we can help improve the care for children on ECMO. God is good! This research project has brought the Christmas Spirit of service into our home. It goes along great with The Light the World initiative by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Merry Christmas to you all!! Please send us your family updates!
Here’s our past years Christmas Cards:
We are going to do a digital Christmas card this year again! It’s just easier and it simplifies our Christmas.
This year we welcome a little girl named Emily. 7 lbs even and 20 inches long. We love her so much!
Merry Christmas!!
Here’s our past years Christmas Cards:
This is the 2015 Christmas video from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called “A Savior is Born”.
Hey! It’s taken me 2.5 months to post Quentin’s 2 year old pictures. I’ve been super busy with my kids, studying photography and keeping my apartment clean!!! That’s why I haven’t had time to post anything!
I dressed him up as Hiro from Big Hero 6. Why? Because his hair was super long and my husband really wanted me to cut it. So I had to dress him up like Hiro before I cut off his awesome hair.
This can be a super easy Halloween Costume for any little boy who has long shaggy hair! It could help if you were Asian or half Asian but either way… it’s super easy to dress up like Hiro.
I love the movie Big Hero 6 because of Baymax… I think I need a Baymax to take care of me!
Isn’t Quentin super cute!?
Our friend took the boys rock climbing! I think climbing is just built into these little boys. Micah who’s 3, loved it. After a few tries, he got 3/4 of the way up the wall.
They even had little harnesses for little toddlers for Quentin.
However, this is how Quentin felt about climbing the wall. “Don’t make me do this!!” He was a little tired and hungry.
We had a blast! So grateful for our friend who took us climbing!
Speaking of climbing mountains, I enjoy this great inspiring message by President Eyring about climbing mountains and “Gaining Power to Overcome Challenges in Life.”
My oldest son, Micah, is now 3 years and 5 months old. He is starting to sound out words and reading short words! I’m seriously so proud of him. My goal is to teach him how to read before he goes into Kindergarten. I’ve been teaching my son how to read ever since he was interested in letters which was well before he was 18 months old. I definitely think this is from Dallin’s genes cause I have never been interested in reading very much at all.
I broke it down to three easy steps. I’m writing this down so I can teach my next kid how to read but may be it’ll help someone else too.
After talking to my mom friends, I really think phonics is the way to begin teaching kids how to read.
First book, my neighbor suggested Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This book has a really boring introduction of instructions for the parents, but once we started the lessons my son seriously took the book and blossomed. Everyday you only do one lesson and it last about 20 minutes. Everything is outlined for you so I didn’t even have to plan anything. It gives you the order to teach the letter sounds, starting with the more obvious sounds like M and S and A then moving towards more complicated sounds like silent E’s… ect. Three reasons why I love the book is 1) it’s super easy for me 2) it teaches kids how to read and not just memorize the words 3) It makes reading into a game.
Another friend suggested the Three Owl’s Reading Method which unfortunately is out of press and I can’t find a copy anywhere. Micah loves these little books!!! This is more of a Montessori approach to teaching kids how to read. The first sounds that it teaches kids are the vowels sounds: a, e, ee, i, o, oo, u. Since it’s out of print, may be I’ll recreate the books and put them online. Dr. Hulda Clark who created the reading system died back in 2009. I’ll email the publisher to find out what I can do. Micah loves Owl’s Eyes more than Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons because they come in little colorful books his size.
The third resource I’ve used to help my child learn how to read is Hooked on Phonics Ipad App. While I’m not a huge fan of their curriculum (mostly their story books are weird), I love love the letter sounds songs and the games they made for their app. Micah loves this app!
Of course, I don’t believe in forcing children to learn how to read but it’s been so fun for Micah that he’s forcing me to teach him how to read!
Now I’m not an expert at this but my younger son, Quentin is 18 months… I started asking him “What sound does M make?” and he replies with “mmmmmmm”. So I truly believe that when a child starts imitating animal sounds they can totally start learning letter sounds too! 🙂
I’ll end with my favorite scripture in Doctrine and Covenants:
D&C 88:118 …seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.
What tips and tricks do you have to teach kids how to read?
Micah just went into primary as a “Sunbeam” this month and on the same day Quentin went into nursery at church! It was a good transition because I was afraid to let Quentin in nursery when there were like eight boys that were a lot older than him. Here is a picture of their first day:
All the older boys went into primary and now our primary is huge! (Well only compared to the other wards in our stake… it’s actually only like 35 kids but our room is small and it feels like a lot of kids.)
The new kids in primary got a Book of Mormon to take to church every week. I decided to make Micah a scripture tote. I remember seeing missionaries make these scripture covers out of cereal boxes for their Bible and Books of Mormon.
It was super easy. I just cut off the top of a cereal box and taped it up all around to laminate it. Then I punched two holes and tied a ribbon so it would be easier for him to carry. Micah keeps all his church stuff in it along with his new Book of Mormon.
I got this Elmo Cereal at the store because Micah insisted that it was the one he wanted. The cereal really really gross but it made a cute box! (It was definitely good marketing on their part…. the cereal is way plain… it’s like dry cardboard.) The scripture tote works pretty good! I don’t know how long it will last though. 🙂
Dallin is still in the bishopric and I’m still a primary chorister. We’re having fun! Here are two cute pictures of Micah and his friends at church.
I’m a mom who loves social media.
I’m a mom who loves taking pictures. I take way more pictures than I can keep up with.
I’m a mom who enjoys blogging and reading blogs.
I’m a mom who really doesn’t have time for blogging.
I’m a mom who blogs anyways usually in place of housework.
When I’m blogging my kids are probably asleep or watching TV.
The funny thing is that I’m usually blogging about my kids.
I usually don’t blog unless my chores are done. That’s why, you see, I haven’t been blogging.
Guess what? My chores are not done today.
… and I guess I’m still blogging today.
There’s probably a lot of better things I could do right now… Oh well.
My absolute favorite quote from general conference was from Sister Reeves called Protection from Pornography – a Christ-Focused Home.
“It is OK if the house is a mess and the children are still in their pajamas and some responsibilities are left undone. The only things that really need to be accomplished in the home are daily scripture study and prayer and weekly family home evening.”
The apartment is not clean.
My kids and I are still in my PJs.
But I did do my personal scripture and personal prayer today.
We also did our family scripture study and family prayer.
And we planted our garden yesterday for Family Home Evening.
So I guess the essentials are done.
So right now, I’m indulging myself by blogging before my kids wake up from nap.
… oh wait … I hear a kid crying.
I guess nap time is over! 🙂
Enjoy cute pictures of Micah and Quentin. It’s a rare occasion to get a picture of both of them looking at the camera at the same time. My mother-in-law hand knit them matching sweaters.
I would love to hear about you!
Who are you? Why do you blog or read other people’s blogs?
Oh man it’s already March 17th and I haven’t posted anything in March! Ok I have lots of excuses. In January, my external hard drive lost half it’s data. I wrote about that here. I spent until March recovering and organizing everything onto a disk drive. I finally finished and was about to back everything up to a cloud storage. Then a few days before spring break, the disk drive failed. The MTF and MTFmirr files were corrupted meaning that the whole hard drive is corrupted! Well that was 1 T of organized data from 2004 to 2014! Anyways… for spring break we left to St. Louis to go visit Dallin’s grandma for her 90th birthday. Now we’re home.
I feel like I’m in such a hole with my big data problem that I don’t want to start recovering from it… but I’ll get back at it during the next few weeks and I’ll start retro-blogging. I have lots to share so check back later!
For now there are new ways to follow us!
These cute icons are from here.
Networked Blogs: 
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Here is our latest Instagram post! Gotta love quick pictures taken with a smart phone. It’s a little different than the pictures I usually post on our blog.
Micah was super upset that his milk turned #green this morning. Quentin was O.K. with it!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! Strange to think that we were in Ireland last year for this special holiday! If only I had my hard drive of pictures to show you St. Paddy’s Day in Ireland. 🙂 Oh well this will do.
I spend so much time talking about Micah but I have another kid named Quentin. He’s 6 months almost 7 months old. He is a very very good baby. He eats well and sleeps well. He has such a tender and gentle personality. Quentin gets frighten really easily which doesn’t help having a loud two year old around. Micah really likes to scare Quentin. Quentin is also very tough because he has to withstand wrestles and toys being thrown at him. Poor little guy. He can sit but has no desire to start crawling.
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